Internet Explorer 7
 

So I hear IE7 for WinXP is out, and its a very poor program with some very annoying bugs (most have to do things with slow sites or slow browsing speed, in which case it just cuts loading in half, resulting in broken images when browsing 4chan and thats pretty much it).
Browser wise its ie6 with an UI tweak, tabs, transparent PNG, many bugfixes and minor CSS improvements.

But, it has exceptionally good security (pretty much no recent vulnerability were affected by it in the past half year while it was being developed), possibly due to the fact that by installing IE7, IE is seperated from the Windows Kernel.

Gotta give Microsoft some props for that, even though the browser feels like its from 2002.

Oya, and it will be put up on Autoupdate as a critical security update (which it is, ironically) from November. I can sympathize with that, and since it also has slightly improved CSS and transparent png support, this is a well needed forward move for the web. Forcing this on users is a justified evil since Microsoft is cleaning up 5 years of mess they created.

So, I wonder, what does GFF think about this?

Haven't tried it yet, but I heard as soon as it came out that there was a security flaw in it. My roomate has tried it and said he thinks it ok. Got some nice new browser enhancements.

Its nothing mindblowing however... :(

That was Beta 1 waaaay back in march or so, when ie7 was nothing more then tabbing + ui redesign...

And yea its nothing mindblowing - its how a browser should've looked in 2002.

Eh, IE7 is just an ugly (as ugly as the Devil's face) knockoff of Safari. It's good that they're trying to make it at least a LITTLE more standards-compliant, but I'm sure in true Microsoft fashion they'll make sure just enough is wrong that other browsers will have difficulties for websites that haven't been tested enough.

Well, that's what everyone's being saying since the first shots of it were showing up in the early builds of Vista. It's ugly because it doesn't follow the UI conventions of Windows XP, and I'm not even going to mention Vista's UI conventions because they're just retarded, and I don't really see anyone but Microsoft fully accepting them.

I have the IE 7 release candidate (I think it's RC2?,) installed, and while it's far better than IE 6, it still will never move me away from Firefox, especially since I've been using Firefox 2.0 RC2 (which is a much better upgrade than 1.0 and 1.5 were.) Internet Explorer can just continue playing catchup as far as I care.

The only reason I installed IE7 is to prevent any backdoors IE6 has had for years, and yet I find no compelling reason to use IE ever again. In fact I don't even use IE Tab for Firefox, it's my way of giving ActiveX and shit IE's html standards a big FU.

I see no purpose to even use ActiveX, unless you hate Java and think browser extensions should be able to access and modify any file on your hard drive.

I've read that IE7's sandbox mode only functions in Vista. Meaning that though it's probably still more secure than IE6 (which isn't saying much...) it's not correct to say that it's totally separate from the OS.

Or maybe evilboris meant something else when he said that it was separate, and I've just misunderstood him. In that case, sorry ^^;.

I don't think Microsoft will ever move to really separate IE (or at least it's core components) from the OS. They've invested too much in making it integral. They might sandbox certain instances, or take other measures to secure how it's tied into the underlying OS, but I don't think they'll ever REALLy separate it. They went to court over it, nearly got broken up, and then got away with it. Why would they stop now?

Still not Standards Compliant, still not worth the bits it takes up on my hard drive.

I think they should stop making IE, no one uses it and all it does is crash, they should just bundle firefox with windows from now on imo, it's embarrassing watching them try to enhance it and it usually becoming more buggy.

Only in a perfect world...

The reality is that Microsoft will not give up on IE and it is the dominant browser in the market last I checked. Microsoft wants to assimilate us all by making us use bad software because it is waiting for us on our desktop when we install the OS.

I think I'll be sticking with Firefox for a while.

Anyone have any idea as to how to have links open in the current IE window but in a new tab. For example, in IE7 if I were to click my signature then a new window will open up rather than a new tab. Any ideas? :eyebrow:

Last time I checked IE still had >80% of the browser market to itself. Among mainstream casual users, IE's just fine for them. It's not that they're stupid; it's just ignorance, always damned ignorance...

As much as we all hate IE, it's good for all of us when it gets more secure, so hackers won't be able to compromise your stupid brother's PC and use that to launch an attack on the whole LAN.

Expecting a tad bit too much aren't we? Remember that the developement cycle was only about 1 year long in which time they had to fix 5 years worth of accumulating bugs - both rendering and stability issues - AND they still managed to add new stuff.
The security thing isn't air talk either, for example no previous IE based exploit affected IE7 at all, during the beta phase.

And just think about it - with 3 major browsers around (IE6, IE7, FF) around, all with different security buildups, threats will be more scarce then they are now. It's much more rewarding to search for exploits when a browser is used by 80% of the visitors, but after the automatic updates take place, that number will surely decrease. More diversity among browsers will cause less threats to appear for one browser from the many, thats common logic.
Plus at least theres an actual developement team on IE, not just a hotfix team.

If they would do that, in 5 years people would treat Firefox like plague.

Hold down CTRL while clicking on the link, or use middle click.

Slightly off-topic, but Firefox 2.0 went final yesterday.

I hadn't bothered with IE7, since Firefox 2.0 came out and all. IE is no longer worth my time or HD space.

I still keep IE around, for the times when Firefox simply stops working.

So is this a Firefox discussion or IE discussion?

Thanks to Microsofts incompetence, any IE discussion automatically becomes a Firefox, Opera or Safari discussion. It's not like people who do the actual coding on the IE are narrow-minded, web-standards-defying morons (quite the contrary, from what I've heard), but the company just does not see the need to take the necessary steps for actual improvement. According to the Halloween documents a few people at Microsoft are indeed worried about open-source and Linux and since fear, uncertainty and doubt are working both ways by now, maybe they should rethink their stragedy.

Does text look a bit burry for you guys in I.E.7? I won't be using I.E. but these little things bother me =/

Someone at the IEblog summarized it up the best:
I think theres enough proof that Microsoft *can* make superior products as long as theres some competition to beat. With the browser wars resurfacing due to more and more firefox zealot faggots, I can imagine that IE will catch up and beat Firefox feature wise.

Disable Cleartype under tools -> internet options -> advanced.

Even if it becomes the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink champion in the web browsers category (which I believe is Opera right now), how exactly will features torpedo the concept of a lean core program and tons of optional add-ons/extensions? Especially since FF does not suffer from the grave security issues of the IE and it never will (due to not being deeply interwoven with the operating system and a more advanced development model, namely open-source). And why do people still consider web standard compliance to be a nice extra of sorts? Open standards and formats are quite important for the future of computing, as they will save most of us a load of cash and effort.

IE7 so far has no crashes for me. Forced to use it as some of the sites I go doesn't work well with Firefox :(

Expecting decent compatability with a 6-year standard is not asking much from a full well-paid development team.

http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/

Exactly how many IE-specific eccentricies are webdesigners still facing now anyway? Or in other words, is Microsoft still trying to defend its fading web browser monopoly by employing Embrace, Extend & Extinguish? Any comprehensive articles or first hand experiences yet?

The main one that comes to mind is ActiveX controls.... a feature that many of us seriously can do without. It is a major component that makes IE quite dangerous and can only be added on as an extension by other browsers. Microsoft has done well over the past years trying to Dummy-proof it, but considering how few applications actually NEED the feature... the general public could probably do without it. Things like Windows Update are nice to have in your web browser... yes... but would you notice anything different if your OS came with an updater application written in VB that goes and grabs your updates from MS safely and securely? People wouldn't even miss it.

Sure, Active X is as useless as a third leg but I was thinking more towards standard compliance in general. A colleague recently showed me the source of a site he created, which had an elegant design coupled with some nice eye candy. The source was already fully W3C standards compliant and didn't look dramatic at all. What did look dramatic was the potion which he had to add just to make this sucker show up correctly on the IE6.

Yep, but that's because IE hasn't taken the standards as their top priority. Immediately they are worried about security and features. I understand their move but simultaneously they should've been working on compliance. They've been doing quite well with CSS support but they still have a long ways to go.

Did you even read my post? They had to fix 5 years worth of bugs and security issues first. And they had roughly a year to do it.

Did Firefox and Opera got perfect support for all w3c standards in 1 year flat after their release? Of course not. They incrementally added features till everything was supported. IE seems to move in that direction too.

No, actually, they used the standards as the basis for their engines.

Funny, it's as if the support just sort of happened!

Then explain why it took so long for Firefox to render the acid test correctly. Using your logic, it should've rendered perfect in the first version of firefox.

So we're supposed to get down on our knees, thanking Microsoft for providing the bare minimum? Bugs are effectively addressed with short release cycles, a robust mantainance team (which didn't exist throughout the IE6 era) and/or a more adequate development model (read: open source) ... not by investing most of the effort put into the next major version jump.

By the way, Firefox 2.0 does not pass the Acid2, a few early 3.0 builds do though. But arguing that every browser which does not pass this test is no better than the IE in terms of standards compliance is like accusing paintings by Caravaggio and Munch of not being completely lifelike.

I dunno, the fact that they STARTED developing IE after 5 years of hiatus, slowly pluggin up its bugs, leading to wider adoption of standards (the few of the ones they fixed), is kinda good. Remember that IE still has ~80% market share, so any new developement for it will have a global effect especially since they plan are distributing it via Windows Update.

I'm not saying that you should kiss Microsofts ass because they added tabs to IE in 1 year. Firefox zealots will not use IE even if it will have way better standards support (remember the first browser wars? IE outperformed Netscape in that field back then).

The fact that they let 5 years worth of bugs and security issues linger is a bit of a problem don't you think? It seems pretty clear that they weren't going to work on that project much more until someone started to creep in on their market share.

And did you even read my post?


And there is your question of...

Again, I reiterate.... yes I expect them to have this product released more standards compliant. The key factor is that they shouldn't have had security issues that are in the vicinity of 5 years old. That's just purely embarrassing. With their market share and revenue they should be able to come up with a better solution. You do realize that security fixes and standards compliance are in totally different realms, yes?

Let's be honest about this, they haven't been touching standards compliance heavily because the general public won't notice. The general public is going to notice things like "omigosh cool tabby things" and less phone calls to Dell tech support because IE helped them get the virus of death. Who does notice? The web design and development community who still have to have tons of work-around code, because otherwise users will look at their sites with confusion... despite them being compliant with standards.